


Whiskey Lullaby

by snowstormjonerys



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-17 00:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2290061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowstormjonerys/pseuds/snowstormjonerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Warning:  This story deals heavily with suicide and death.  Please be warned that if this could be a trigger for you, you should not read it.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Whiskey Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story deals heavily with suicide and death. Please be warned that if this could be a trigger for you, you should not read it.

Whiskey Lullaby

She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger

And finally drank away his memory

Life is short but this time it was bigger

Than the strength she had to get up off her knees

We found her with her face down in the pillow

Clinging to his picture for dear life

We laid her next to him beneath the willow

The angels sang a whiskey lullaby

 

Beth finally reached the cabin and hoisted the crossbow off her shoulder and set it inside the door of the cabin. She had only brought it as a precaution. She didn't want to get killed by a group of walkers before she had a chance to properly mourn him in private. She still couldn't believe he was gone. It had been unthinkable. Sure, she always worried about him when he was gone on runs, but somewhere deep down she always knew he'd come back to her, just like he said.

So when Rick, Tyreese, Maggie and Glenn had come back from their run the day before, she had been unable to believe that he was not with them.

"Where is he?" she'd said. "He finally find another bike? He's been complainin' ever since he lost his other one." She laughed a little and then noticed their faces. They'd all been crying, Maggie especially. She had walked over to her and Beth had just backed away, shaking her head furiously. The tears hadn't come. She had expected them to, but they didn't. She was so damned angry that he was gone. That the world had taken him away from her. The first tears hadn't even come until she finally gained the courage to walk out to where they had laid him under the weeping willow tree outside the house they had holed up in for the past several weeks.

She figured if she waited just long enough, he'd come sauntering back in, bow on his back and smirk on his face, just for her, asking her "Did ya miss me, Greene?" But it never happened.

They all watched her. Waited for her to break down but it didn't happen until she went out there. As she finally got to his side, saw where he lay, broken, battered, the tears started to fall. She didn't think they had stopped since. She had sunk down to her knees, sobbing, the pain in her heart too much to bear, weighing her down and wishing it would suck her right down into the earth, down past the dirt, past the dead because that's what she felt. Worse than dead. She had lain over his body, knowing it was the last time she would ever be able to do so. And even if it was macabre, she wished she could lay there forever. But they finally pulled her away, Maggie and Rick; she had heard herself but it didn't sound like her. It was primal, animal-like this, despair that had overcome her. Sadness couldn't describe it. Anguish didn't come close. Empty. That was it. Just cold and empty. Numb.

She walked over to the kitchen cabinet in the cabin and pulled out the bottle of whiskey they had been saving. This had been her and Daryl's spot to come and get away. They had spent countless stolen hours here, leeching every minute out of every hour they spent there, soaking up each other's presence. She could feel him in every single board of this ramshackle cabin. She felt him in the air, could still smell his scent on the pillow she now clung to as she sunk onto the floor against the far wall of the front room. She couldn't bear to lay in the bed where they had lain. Couldn't bear to think that he would never again hold her in his arms.

She opened the bottle of whiskey and thought about her father then. What he might think about what she was about to do. She decided that he wasn't here, so it didn't really much matter. She turned the bottle up and gulped down as much as she could swallow, hoping it would give her the courage to do what she needed to do.

That reminded her of first drink. It had been with Daryl, before they had reunited with everyone. Before she'd been separated from them all. At the time, she had thought that was the worst thing imaginable; being separated from the ones she loved, especially Daryl. She was wrong.

While she was gone, she'd had time to think about everything and what he had said to her just before she'd been taken away from him. She knew, in his own way, he was trying to tell her so much more than she had changed his way of thinking about things. He'd later told her she'd changed him. And he wanted to be beside her for the rest of their lives, if she'd have him.

The rest of their lives, she thought bitterly, and the tears came again. This was it. The end of the line for her. He'd reached his end and now she was ready to go too. On her terms. She remembered saying that to Maggie back before she had decided to live. She didn't regret the decision she'd made that day and she knew she wouldn't regret the one she was making now. She took another long swallow of the amber liquid, wincing as it hit her throat, feeling the burn, but welcoming the pain. Any feeling other than this aching numbness was welcomed.

When you love someone, hurt is kind of part of the package

Those words spoken so long ago were now coming back to haunt her, words spoken in a time of hope no longer applied. She had lost all hope when she'd buried the man she loved more than life itself. Loving him was the best part of her life. Loving him had been like a summer rain, welcome after a dry spell, quenching the heat for a moment, steam rising up off the pavement in its wake. Loving him had been her greatest joy. In him she had found a friend. In him, she had found a lover. In him, she had found a soul mate. And it had been everything. She finished the contents of the whiskey and waited for the effects to take over her.

If loving him had been everything, losing him was too. She had lost everything that had ever mattered to her. She had lost every bit of herself that mattered. Buried it right along with him and all they represented. She had nothing left but a few notes he'd written her, promises from him for time together, that he loved her. That he'd never leave her. Except he did. He was gone and she didn't want to go on.

You're going to be the last man standing.

She hated herself for saying those words to him more than anything. She felt like she'd inadvertently sealed his fate with that statement and if she could take it back, she would. She had told him that he was meant for the way the world was now, but she'd been wrong. No one was made for this world now. Too harsh, too cold. Just a sea of dead roaming the earth, devouring the flesh they could find. And those left in the world, the ones who weren't good, they were worse, devouring trust, devouring humanity, devouring lives, until all hope was gone.

Pretty soon, I won't need you at all.

More words to regret. More words she couldn't take back. I do need you Daryl, she thought. I do.

She scrawled out a quick note, nothing fancy.

"I'm sorry. Without him, all hope is gone. Please forgive me." Love, Beth

She didn't want to be in a world without Daryl in it. Her decision made, she picked up the handgun and whispered into the dark of the night, "I tried, but I can't. I love you." She placed the gun to her head and in a final moment of clarity pulled the trigger.

Rick heard it just yards away from the house. She hadn't been gone long, Maggie had said she'd gone off to hunt. Maggie had thought nothing of it; Beth was prone to going out to hunt even without Daryl sometimes. He'd shown her how to track and she had gotten really good at it.

Daryl had told him about the place a couple weeks back; he'd said just in case and looked at him and Rick knew, as soon as Maggie told him that Beth had gone into the woods, that she was coming out here. Knew it was their special place, a place for the two of them to just unwind and decompress from their everyday lives.

He didn't know why he started to run as soon as he heard the shot, but he took off in a sprint, running as fast as his legs would carry him until he reached the door. He braced himself. He knew in light of recent circumstances that it was too much to hope that she'd had to fell a walker in there.

He opened the door and even though he had tried to prepare himself for it, it had done nothing to cushion the blow of seeing her laying there, the gun having fallen off into the floor, and he tried real hard not to look at the all the blood spattered everywhere. He went over to her and sat down on the floor beside her lifeless body, pulling her into his lap, running his coarse hand over her hair, sticky now with her blood.

She was family to him and he felt her loss just as much as he did everyone else's maybe more because of Judy. He knew why she'd done it. What he didn't know was why it was even necessary anymore to question people's motives. He didn't know he was crying until he saw the teardrops falling onto the note that she had left.

Forgive her? There was nothing to forgive in Rick's mind. In this world, they'd all done the worst kinds of things to stay alive. He figured she'd just done what she had to do to die. She didn't want to be in a world without him in it. Hell, he didn't figure he did either, but he had Judy and Carl to think about now. It wouldn't be an option for him.

They'd once just asked for a chance to live from someone. Someone who wanted to take the choice from them. They'd asked for just a chance to try. Try to survive. Try to live. Try for as long as they could. Until they couldn't. He figured that was where Beth was at when she pulled the trigger. She tried as long as she could until she just couldn't. He didn't begrudge her that.

They laid her under the weeping willow, dug up his grave. They'd argued about it. Some said it was too morbid, that the dead shouldn't be disturbed. Maggie had finally spoken up, her silence finally broken after the past six hours.

"It's what they both would have wanted. The old rules don't apply anymore. They loved each other. They should have their final rest together."

And so it was. Rick stood there over their combined grave. They were leaving today. No one wanted to stay there after all that had happened. Daryl was gone. Beth was gone. It was time for them to move on. It was the way of the world now.

He looked at the makeshift tombstone that they had made for them. An old board from their cabin, with the words painstakingly carved into the wood:

Daryl and Beth Dixon

Love Everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> I cried while writing this. A whole fucking lot. It hurt to write it. A whole fucking lot. Had to stop several times because I could not see the screen or the keys. This was the hardest and saddest thing that I have ever written, but I did it because the world lost someone really special. This is dedicated to another Beth. You were a beautiful person inside and out and the world will not be the same without you in it.
> 
> Special thanks to jazznmoke for the song idea. It was pretty much perfect. Ly girl. You're my bae. So thanks for the song and for being here for me when I'm a sobbing mess. Thank you too to PrincessPears. Girl, you just get me.


End file.
